Learning about learning

Last September, my name came up in some official roll-of-the-dice selection process and I got the authoritative dispatch informing me I had been selected for jury duty. I dutifully reported to the courthouse as required only to discover this was no ordinary sit around, read a book, knit a scarf and maybe get picked one day jury.

This was the Grand Jury at the Federal Level, and those who were selected for the honor would be committed to a full year of service, reporting to the courtroom every other Tuesday for a year. There were 58 of us, and they needed to select 23 jurors and 6 alternates, so I figured I had a 50/50 chance of missing the winner's circle on this one. They pulled 29 names mine wasn't included. Phew.

Then we began the excuses and dismissals for people who had relatives involved in a trial, the jobs that would create hardship, the grandmother traveling overseas for the birth of a child who would miss several months, etc, and one by one, the pool diminished and a replacement was added. We were close to being finished, and a "what about...." question arose from a final candidate. She was dismissed, and my name was drawn. <Cue Perry Mason music> What the heck, I figured. You can always learn something, right? I have fond childhood memories of the Perry Mason theme song playing as I walked down the hall to bed every night. It was one of my grandfather's favorite shows and it came on after the 11:00 news.

Sworn to Secrecy

Our training included very stern instructions that we were not to discuss the proceedings of the trial with anyone. Spouse. Mother. Therapist. Nada. No one. It was especially important because this is Rhode Island, and as a small state, six degrees of separation is more like 2.31, so we aren't allowed to talk about the cases. I can tell you that it's like watching a mashup of Law and Order where the case changes at each commercial break. We've had 16 cases so far, and I've filled up three notebooks, which, by the way, must be left in the courtroom, along with the officially appointed court pen. We may not bring our cell phones past the security guards (lest we record something!) though we can house them in a little phone locker with the security staff by the metal detectors and sign them out at lunch. I was jonesing over that the first couple of weeks (How do I tell time?) but I got over that and now don't even bother to bring my iPhone along to sit in the little locker.

So What Does This Have to Do with Learning?

You may be wondering, since I can't talk about any of this, what it has to do with learning. LOTS! Let me explain.

If you've gotten an email from me, you know my email signature quotes Ray Leblond and says, "You learn something every day if you pay attention." My reply signature asks, "What have you learned today?" and when I'm in business mode, I answer my phone, "It's a great day for learning!" so I'm pretty invested in this learning thing. One of the things that has been screamingly obvious to me about court proceedings is that lawyers ask questions to present facts. Not tell stories. It drives me nuts trying to keep a bajillion names, dates and places straight, often with terminology that's brand new to me. Generally, after a couple of hours, the groundwork that has been painstakingly laid down scattered brick by scattered brick comes together, but sheesh, it's an effort. I sit there wishing I had a chart or flow chart or some job aid to help me keep track of things. If they'd just let the witness tell a story! Nope. It doesn't work that way. Lawyers have specific directions they want the process to move in. Our ah-ha moments must be extracted from the facts, not their insights, I guess. Perhaps one of you lawyerly people might explain why and enlighten me. This seems much harder it needs to be.

Statistics is Like That Too!

During the last month, I have been taking a statistics course on Coursera as part of the Human Computer Interface Design series I've been working through. The series has been AWESOME and I've learned a ton and a half in the other courses. This course, well, if he was teaching it in Telegu it would make as much sense to me.

He presents a lecture like the one in the picture with all kinds of formulas and graphs and charts, then jumps into R Studio to show us how to enter the formulas to read the data in the exercise files. Type, click, control+enter and POOF! A bunch of numbers. That mean something. I have no idea what, but to the statistician, are really important. When he's done, we're sent off to take a multiple choice quiz on what he talked about, then complete a series of exercises to repeat what he did on the screen to try it out on our own.

Lucky for me, Coursera embraces competency, and in most courses, allows you to take quizzes multiple times, giving you feedback to help you understand why your selection wasn't correct. (Mine usually aren't since I don't understand 80% of the content in this course.) The best thing this prof has done is to provide the formulas to correctly calculate things in R in the feedback. (God bless you, Dr. Wobbrock!!) We just have to substitute out the name of the file. This, I can do. I'm not sure why, but it does give me the right answer.

and getting number strings as answers. Can I make the formulas compute the numbers? Yup! Do I understand what I'm doing? Nope. Could I take a data set and figure out how to do something with it, selecting the right test and plotting the correct syntax to get it? Not on your life.

​I shall pass this course, but only because of the help given in the feedback of the wrong answers. Do I know statistics? Nope. Not really much of an inkling. My big picture definition says that statistics is a method of validating that something is different from something else using a plethora of named tests that identify something unique for each one. There are t-tests and p scores and variables. I'm not sure I'm ready to put it into the bin with calculating ROI formulas yet, but it's pretty close. Maybe one of my geeky friends reading this can enlighten me on the value of all this. But it has given me some interesting insights on learning, and what we should and should not do in our learning.

What's The "So What" of All This?

After being an audience member in these two scintillating experiences, I've realized that our training has the potential to do this to our learners if we aren't careful.

Presenting fact after fact after fact after fact after fact with nothing to string them together produces cognitive overload. You must connect facts with a purpose, whether it's a story, or an example of using the information. I watch my fellow jurors put down their pens and zone out when there are more names and dates and places and events than we can keep straight. You eat an elephant one bite at a time, folks. Let your people chew and swallow!

You must connect the new learning with something that the learner is familiar with. Whether it's a visual, or diagram or metaphor, you need something for the learner to hang onto when you are introducing a completely new concept. If it's all new vocabulary and new concepts, your learner will zone out on overload just like the overly factored (pun intended) group in the first point. While this course is intended to build on the knowledge I've gained week after week, I'm climbing invisible, no make that non-existent!, monkey bars since I've nothing to hang onto from the beginning. If your learner has no experience with the subject you are introducing, bridge the gap, or you will leave them on the other side. As trainers, we need to bring learners along on the journey. Don't ride off into the sunset, leaving them in a cloud of dust choking and confused. Scaffold for success.

So what? Are there things you need to adjust in your courses? Take a look at your feedback. There may be flounderers in your world.